


Wired

by EnglishLanguage



Category: Tron - All Media Types, Tron: Uprising
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Violence and Past Character Death, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Mara is too good for this world, Mental Health Issues, Psychological Trauma, also Beck wants a hug and gets himself a hug, and Tron tries to be less emotionally constipated, in which Zed does his best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:15:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23691478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnglishLanguage/pseuds/EnglishLanguage
Summary: Being the Renegade begins to take its toll on Beck.
Relationships: Beck & Mara & Zed (Tron), Beck & Tron (Tron)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 58





	Wired

**Author's Note:**

> This... was supposed to be an entirely different fic. However, as fics are wont to do, it got off-track on the second sentence, and here we are.

This millicycle around, it’s Zed who sets it all in motion.

Zed—a program who’s all narrow shoulders and nervous tics that stop just short of his (steady, meticulous) hands. A program written to undo destruction, to return ruined fragments to a cohesive whole. He’s as far from a threat as any program can be.

Beck knows that.

He _knows,_ but it changes nothing. Zed approaches from behind, footsteps too careful, too soft, brushing an unexpected hand across the top of Beck’s shoulder—and Beck stiffens.

Spins on his heel, drops his weight low. 

Right hand to left shoulder, disc off and lit and _move, Beck, now!_

He squints through a white-hot blur across his visual field, and as the haze dissipates, as the expected pain of an enemy disc never hits him, Beck… settles. Blinks. He’s fine.

It’s Zed.

Just Zed. He’s wide-eyed, with hands raised and circuits flushed bright with distress. Abruptly, awareness _slams_ back into Beck’s body. He can feel himself, can tell his knees are wavering, giving out, can sense the heat of his ignited disc—held out in front of him—on his fingers. And at least the weapon isn’t at Zed’s throat, at least Beck’s friend isn’t injured, isn’t shattered and derezzing, _users_ —

Stark silence drops between them (between Zed’s hunched, rigid form and Beck’s twitching hands, heaving body), slick and brittle as glass. 

“Zed?”

Zed shakes himself, head to toe, and takes a deliberate step backward, straightens up as he rolls his weight back to his heels. He’s uneven, off-balanced, and the thought flashes across Beck’s mind that it would be _easy_ to subdue Zed here and now—a shoulder to his chest could knock him to the floor, an elbow to an unguarded (too trusting) face would take him offline.

“Zed,” Beck repeats, and feels _sick,_ “I’m sorry. I didn’t—guess I didn’t see you there.”

“Huh,” Zed breathes.

It’s almost a chuckle. 

It’s completely Zed, startled and confused and more than a little angry, still giving Beck an easy out from the situation: _just laugh, and we’ll pretend it was an innocent misunderstanding._ The rules are simple. Zed won’t ask; Beck won’t mention anything the next time he moves too quickly and Zed shies away. As if everything changed, but nothing happened. 

Beck can’t accept that. 

He swallows, tries to force words out past the guilt— “Seriously, Zed, I didn’t see you. You know I wouldn’t hurt you—” but it’s all the same useless _I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry_ that explains nothing and gets them nowhere.

Zed manages a faint smile, mouth stretched tight and thin, pinned up at the corners. “I know. It’s fine. Are you gonna let go of that?” he asks, gesturing at the space between them.

_Oh._

Beck returns his disc to his shoulders; he has to pry his fingers off of it, one at a time, each one frozen in a half-curled grip. He flexes his hand. Waves it at Zed, as if to be friendly, as if he can pretend he’s all soft fingers, no danger. 

As if he’s just a mechanic, and the Renegade hasn’t bled harsh, white stains into everything that used to be Beck’s and now belongs to the uprising. 

“Beck?”

“Yeah?” His hands are still trembling. Beck crosses his arms, hides fists behind elbows. Tries to think straight, to focus on anything besides his racing circuits and Zed’s concerned expression. Around him, the garage is a blur of blue light and tangled noise, just programs going about their business. _Somehow,_ _they didn’t even notice._

Zed snaps his fingers. “Hey, look. Are you, y’know, okay?”

“Sure,” he replies. “I’m great.”

Zed raises a skeptical eyebrow, matches Beck’s stance; he folds his arms tight across his chest, perches up on his toes. “Have you been getting recharge? Like—at all?” Now, sharp skepticism leaks into his voice, replacing trepidation. It’s not ideal, but far better than before, and maybe Beck didn’t glitch this up completely. 

Maybe Zed can escape this encounter (can escape Beck, can escape everything volatile and slowly shattering inside of him) unscathed. Even if Beck is incapable of forgetting this. Of forgiving himself. 

“Yes, Zed,” Beck reassures. Rolls his eyes, for good measure.

It’s a lie, of course. 

How is he supposed to get recharged while energy tears through his circuits like raw lightning? While he can’t even think straight, when he’s suffocating under this user-fragged sense of nebulous _hypervigilance_ crawling around his mind?

Zed only blinks, presses his lips together. Finally coughs up a rough sigh— “I’ll take your word for it—” and gives it up, turns away. 

The problem being that Zed has a thing for physical contact; he’s fluttery with it, likes to tap fingers and palms against his vehicles, his tools, his friends, like everything will dematerialize if he doesn’t periodically reassure himself it’s all there. As he leaves, then, Zed lifts a hand to pat Beck’s arm… and freezes.

Looks away sheepishly, as if any of this is his fault.

Something inside of Beck flickers, gutters out. He lets Zed drop his arm and walk away.

* * *

This isn’t Beck’s first _incident._

But it’s been the most obvious so far, and he thinks they’re getting worse. 

* * *

“I’ve been feeling kinda strange, lately,” he starts, shuffling around the real problem, the real questions he wants to ask. “Just… off.”

Beck fully expects Tron to brush it off, tell him to stop complaining and start the next simulation. He does _not_ expect the older program to shut down the training facility completely, letting the holographic streets of Argon dissipate into an empty room, lit sterile green. 

“From your last mission?” Tron asks, and runs a scan. 

It’s gentle exchange of energy, Tron’s metal-white voltage (weighed down with cycles of memory) skating across the surface of Beck’s circuitry, nothing more. Even so, Beck braces himself. Waits for the scan to collide with and _grate_ against some form of damage, some fracture in his code that would explain all his recent glitches. 

But… nothing. 

“I’m not picking up on anything.” Tron frowns, steps closer. “Beck, if you think something’s wrong, you should see a medical program. I’m not qualified for much more than basic triage.”

Disappointment crawls through Beck’s circuits, slow and viscous. “Nah,” he says, shrugging—though his body feels heavier than normal, and it’s hard to stand straight, stop his shoulders from slumping. “I think I’m fine. Just need more recharge.” 

Two fingers bump against his chin, startle him into raising his head and looking Tron in the eye.

And Beck tries to look truthful, really, but he gets the sense that Tron knows Beck’s tells better than Beck does. In other words, he’s completely fragged. First, he tries holding his eyes wide and guileless, before he figures he’s overdoing it and glares at Tron instead. Steps out of Tron’s reach, while he’s at it; Tron likes to keep his hands to himself, and it’s _weird_ and _concerning_ that he’s touching Beck now, however subtly.

Tron must be… worried. Legitimately so.

Users, that’s such an unusual conclusion to come to.

“Your circuits are running colder than normal,” Tron suddenly mentions, frowning. “It’s not a problem, not necessarily, especially if getting recharge fixes it.”

“Yeah, I think my circuits cycle energy too quickly now; they—” scorch him, abandon him on a brutal edge, like he’s always running, always on the verge of a fight. “I mean, I get tired a lot faster than I used to.”

Is it normal that his processes pick up so much more input than they used to, focusing on the strangest details?

Is it normal that he’s overloaded with danger warnings every other microcyc?

He’s antsy, twitchy; he can’t—

He doesn’t— 

“When did all of this start?” Tron asks, some aspect of his face held carefully blank. 

And Beck can’t answer that honestly.

Because this problem’s been dragging at him for more millicycles than he count, and admitting to that means admitting there’s something wrong with him besides a single, sleepless rest cycle. 

He goes with a vague “pretty recently.” There’s a grin on his face, but it feels as rigid, as thin as the visor on his helmet. “It’s just this milli that’s been really weird, though.” Zed could attest to that. “Thought I’d make sure I didn’t have some strange glitch or bug, but I don’t, so it’s all good.”

So he’ll have to do better at hiding it. At stifling his alertness and reflexes, at not hurting the programs he cares about.

Tron nods tersely. “Tell me if the problem continues.”

“Right.”

“And go rest.”

“What? No.”

Tron works his jaw against a rebuke; Beck can almost _see_ the words—jagged and swollen with impatience—forming on the security program’s tongue. Settling on a gruff exhale, Tron pointedly looks at Beck’s hands, each cupped around the opposite elbow. It’s the first time Beck notices his own, crushing grip on his arms; his hands are stiff with tension, eight out of ten fingertips digging dimples into the soft material of his gridsuit. The other two, on his right hand, flutter against his skin, tapping at a pace double the rapid pulse of his circuitry.

“I’m fine,” Beck insists. Tension frays his voice. “I don’t need you to go easy on me.”

He… probably does. Just this once.

Tron knows it. Beck knows it. It’s only that Beck’s ego stings, and he selfishly (irrationally, but he hasn’t been thinking straight since Zed) wishes Tron would be more discreet about it. 

“I don’t need _you_ burning out,” Tron retorts, voice acerbic. “You work hard, Beck. Take a break, pull yourself together, and come back when you aren’t shaking hard enough to break into voxels. Understood?”

 _Not_ understood. “These missions are important; I can’t just—”

“You can.” 

The lines around Tron’s eyes and nose go soft, and it’s an expression Beck’s seen on Able’s face far too often. An expression he’s seen on himself, when he analyzes his reflection and thinks of Mara and Zed, of everyone in Able’s garage, of all the programs he’s failed and every reason why he can’t risk failing again. 

It’s an indefinable emotion, all at once frustrated and concerned, blazing with determination and heavy with code-deep exhaustion. _For Flynn’s sake, please just take care of yourself_ —though Tron would never use those words. 

Something inside Beck gives way, subsides. Tron must pick up on it, because he nods, continues, “Tesler’s been quiet, lately, and Argon’s finally settling into the new curfew. Nothing’s going to fall apart if the Renegade is absent for the next few millicycles.”

“What if something does go wrong?”

“I’ll take care of it, Beck. Go.”

Beck gnaws at his lip, uncertain, but reluctant gratitude is already leaking through his circuits, and he knows he won’t reject the offer. “Fine. Fine, but you can’t keep me away for long; don’t test me.”

Tron barks out a startled laugh. “Of course not.”

* * *

A crane malfunctions.

As is typical.

The counterweight frags out, derezzes, and the entire mechanism keels over, smashes a lightcycle to voxels with a sound as loud and harsh as an explosion.

Beck flinches into a ball, tries to cover his eyes, his ears, before reality shatters around him—

He catches himself at the last nano, stops short. As she jogs toward the wreckage, Mara aims a quick, bewildered look at him. Not that there’s anything to see here. He’s just… chafing at the back of his neck. Just curling fingers into his hair, tugging sharply, pretending he can grip his head with a hand and manually hold himself together. 

* * *

Beck considers confiding in Able.

Able knows about the Renegade, which means Beck wouldn’t be forced to leave crucial details out of his explanation. He could admit that sudden physical contact is becoming an issue. It feels like a threat. 

Or that the color red makes him short-circuit, hands flying to his face— _glitch it, he’s not wearing his helmet; his face is visible_ —before he remembers, a nano too late, that he’s not wearing the white armor. He’s just Beck, and no one is actively hunting down Beck.

Or that he’s becoming violent on instinct, and he’s terrified of it. 

Beck considers confiding in Able, but he has no guarantee that Able will react well. Beck doesn’t know if he could tolerate Able’s vindication, his claim that he was right about the Renegade—the job’s too difficult for Beck, after all. He can’t let Able take this responsibility away from him.

A vague sense of shame curls through his circuitry. 

* * *

“So—something _did_ come up.”

Tron opens his eyes, huffs. He’s either irritated or amused; with Tron, Beck still struggles to tell the two apart. “Something did,” he agrees, admitting to nothing else.

“You needed me,” Beck notes, because if Tron refuses to come to the obvious conclusion, Beck has no problems speaking up. “I should’ve been there. I should’ve helped you.”

Tron shakes his head. “I said I’d take care of it, didn’t I?”

And he did. He dismantled—obliterated, really—some new piece of weaponry that the Occupation had been developing in Purgos. Tron covers his tracks neatly, and Beck wouldn’t have even known his mentor had picked a fight with Pavel if it weren’t for the massive explosion that took down Tesler’s ship at the end of the mission. 

The damage was impressive. Spectacular. Effective, too; Able was put in charge of repairs, but was unable to salvage anything of Tesler’s new weapon. 

So it’s not that Beck doubts Tron’s competence. 

He’s just questioning Tron’s decision to expend so much energy during a prolonged absence from the healing chamber. 

It’s fine, now. Tron’s healing, sitting in the tank with knees pulled up to his chest in an unusual display of vulnerability, exhaustion. Usually, Tron stands. _Usually,_ though, the scarring doesn’t get this bad.

Squares of corroded black and grey swarm up the left side of his face, eating into the structure of his cheek and chin. His left eye is ruined, clouded white, as opaque and muddled as a web of fractured glass. It’s also stiff and frozen wide, like an echo of terror—and Beck can’t quite make himself meet Tron’s lopsided, hollowed-out gaze.

Compared to his face, Tron’s torso is… worse. Somehow.

It must hurt. It must be _agony,_ especially with the old injuries being burned shut with industrial-grade energy, but Tron is tough. As a rule, the security program does not verbally acknowledge weakness. 

(Which has a bit to do with Beck’s hesitation to do the same, but that’s neither here nor there.)

“How are you feeling?” Tron asks.

Beck blinks, shakes off surprise. Tries to sort out his thoughts. “How am _I_ feeling? You’re serious?”

“Yes.”

“Um.” Same as ever. “Better.” 

Tron hums and closes his eyes, not challenging Beck’s response, but not accepting it, either.

The security program holds his shoulders high and close to his ears, and there’s something about his restive bearing, about the dark, sprawling scars and pale light reflecting blue off circuits, that’s achingly familiar.

Slumped against his own wall, Beck leans forward, cranes his neck. Sorts through his memory banks, and it takes a couple of nanocycs, but— _oh._

_Dyson._

At one point during that whole fiasco, Beck had watched Tron position himself in front of the healing chamber, staring into it, carrying too much violent tension in his chest and on his shoulders. And Beck had wondered what it was that Dyson had done to reduce Tron to _fury,_ to so thoroughly destroy the security program’s unyielding, coolly logical facade.

Then, he had thrown a bomb at Tron’s disc and reversed the gravity. 

And even though the explosive mechanism in the bomb was disabled, even though Beck would never hurt Tron and Tron knows it, the security program still _glitched out._ Still threw the bomb outside the room (Beck was banking on that), and still hunched into a defensive ball, hands flat against his ears, circuits racing with tangible fear. He held the position for a few long nanos after it should have been apparent that the bomb wasn’t going off (which—Beck wasn’t banking on, not at all). 

(But, in hindsight, he thinks he understands Tron’s reaction.)

Uneasy, Beck dismisses the memory. Searches for the tattered beginnings of a new conversation, a distraction. “About that mission, did you derez anyone... important?”

On second thought? Beck cringes.

 _That_ came out sounding more like an accusation than he intended. 

“If you’re referring to General Tesler? No.”

“Pavel?” Beck asks. “Or—or Paige?”

“No,” Tron repeats, and adds, “not this time. I saw them escape before the explosion.”

“You didn’t hunt them down?” Beck rubs a hand across his face, puts a check on the frustration gnawing at his voice. He reminds himself that it’s his own fault for getting aggravated—he’s the one who asked the question. He knows Tron is ruthless, dedicated to his function as a security program, a killer. 

“I don’t want a power vacuum,” is Tron’s bland response. “As long as Tesler remains pathetic and ineffectual, he keeps his life.”

Beck dips his chin, accepts it. “That happened, then,” he mutters, because he can’t bring himself to call it either good or bad. “Pavel must’ve been shocked, though—” a grin twitches at the corner of his mouth— “when he ran into you instead of the Renegade.”

Tron snorts. Tips his head back against the barrier of the tank and cracks open his functional eye, fixing Beck with a wry look.

“Users.” Beck shakes his head. “I’d give anything to have seen that glitchhead’s face.”

* * *

“You’re not okay,” Mara mentions, so casually that Beck wouldn’t know _how_ to deny it if he tried. She states it like a fact, no doubt to it, and he—

“Users, Mara.”

He’s been caught off-guard. Again. Mara has a tendency to kick his legs out from under him by the backs of his knees. 

“You do this thing,” she explains, still glaring into the depths of the bike she’s repairing. “With your disc? It’s like something scares you, and your first reaction is to try and derez it.”

The observation smarts. “I _don’t_ derez programs.”

Mara blinks, turns to him, and there’s something of an apology, a raised-hands surrender, in her eyes that she’ll never put into words. “Well, obviously not; I didn’t mean to imply—” With a sharp exhale, she averts her gaze, chewing on her lip as she gathers her thoughts. At last, she gets off her knees, settles herself on the floor with crossed legs, which means she’s looking to start a long and _painfully honest_ conversation. 

Beck gives her time. Pretends he’s doing actual work, and not just fidgeting with his recoding wrench. 

“You’re a good program, Beck. I know you wouldn’t hurt anyone.” 

That’s… not exactly true.

“You literally _couldn’t_ hurt anyone, if we’re being completely accurate here. It’s not like mechanics get deresolution permissions, and you’re not stupid enough to hack your disc.”

“Nah,” he interrupts, huffing softly. “This isn’t Purgos, Mara; we’re more civilized than that.”

“Oh, shut off.”

But she’s smiling, now, and the intensity of the conversation drops, whirs to a halt, like a deactivated weapon. 

“I’ve got a bad startle response,” Beck admits, half-cautious, half-joking, but pushing the issue regardless because he wants to resolve this now. “So what?”

 _“So,_ you’re scaring Zed.”

“Sorry.” Did Zed tell her? Or was she watching the entire time?

“Not like that, idiot.” Mara brushes her hair out of her face, curls a thick strand of it behind her ear. “He’s worried. I’m worried, too; you didn’t act like this before—”

She stops. Almost chokes on her words.

Beck’s circuits go cold. He steels himself, makes sure his face is blank before pressing the issue. “Before what?”

“Before Bodhi. So. Like I said. You’re not okay.”

And she’s not wrong. 

Beck’s still empty. Still hurting, burning up inside. There’s no way to delete those memories. No way to forget the terror shearing through his circuits, and Bodhi stepping forward, Bodhi _gone,_ the stench of hot energy scalding the floors.

Red-hot light rolling off Clu’s statue, warping Beck’s vision, suffocating him.

Her voice goes quiet, gentle. “He was murdered, Beck. It makes sense that you don’t feel safe, that your first instinct is to try and protect yourself.” Her arms, resting on her lap, twitch; Mara looks away as she wraps them around her abdomen, curls forward. “I get it, okay? I don’t feel safe, either.”

It’s ridiculous.

Both of them are struggling. Both of them carry a weight that started with Bodhi, but didn’t end with him—Beck is the Renegade, and Mara’s no less of an insurgent than he is. But she hasn't connected Beck to his alternate identity, and she’s unaware Beck knows about her own illegal activities, so they can’t talk about it. 

Can’t do anything but feed each other half-truths and worn-down reassurances. 

“Beck?”

“Hm?”

She reaches out, palm up, and Beck shoves aside all the wariness and misplaced distrust clinging, corroded, to his circuits. He places his hand in hers, fits their fingers together. Squeezes.

Her hand is warm and delicate against his, sticky with patches of spilled energy. 

“I know you won’t talk to me,” she starts, and bats her other hand at Beck before he can apologize. “It’s fine. Users know you’re a private program. But, _please,_ find someone you can trust. Okay?”

Beck closes his eyes. “Yeah. Okay.”

* * *

_Someone he can trust._

The correct decision is difficult to make, but so obvious that there’s no other answer. 

* * *

“You don’t usually come here on your rest cycles.” 

Beck jumps, goes for his disc, barely remembers to ball his hand into a fist before he does anything stupid like _throw a lethal weapon at the Champion of the Grid._

On the other side of the room, Tron stands with arms folded neatly across his chest. Suspicion sits rigid in the corners of his eyes and mouth.

“Tron,” Beck greets, and realizes he doesn’t know where to go from there. He doesn’t know how to explain why he came here, why he _needs_ Tron. Doesn’t want to admit that he lied, before; and yes, actually, he thinks there’s something wrong with him that’s far more serious than a millicycle of running on low energy.

Tron cocks his head to the side. “Are you alright?”

_No._

Beck _aches._

“Fine.” That’s too abrupt. He blinks, revises his response to sound like he isn’t a raging liar. “I’m fine, really. Got a good amount of work done at the garage and figured I might as well come… visit.”

Tron shakes his head. “Beck,” he chides, sighing, “be honest.”

“Well, if you knew I wasn’t fine, why’d you ask?”

_“Beck.”_

“I feel awful,” he admits, forcing the words off his tongue before he can swallow them down again. “For a long time now. And I don’t know what to do. I’m nervous—” his voice catches in his throat. Breaks. “I can’t focus anymore. Everything scares me, and no, I can’t calm down, and it’s exhausting; I’m _exhausted, I_ —”

There are too many words. They knot up at the base of his throat, lodging there, and all Beck can do is bite his tongue. 

All he can do is stand there and shiver and hide his hands behind his back so Tron won’t see how unsteady they are.

“I shouldn’t complain,” he tries to apologize, and manages a harsh whisper. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

Tron’s voice is softer, pitched lower than usual, and it rumbles in his chest like a blur of distant thunder. His head tips to the side, assessing, and it’s a habit—a sign of curiosity, of _concern_ —that Beck knows Tron actively tries to suppress. Beck doesn’t know how to react to it. Doesn’t know how to accept Tron’s emotion, or the strange and fragile connection that hovers between them, spanning the length of the room. 

Beck opens his mouth. Can’t think of what to say, where to go from here.

He closes it again.

It’s Tron who breaks the volatile silence between them, dipping his chin in a subtle nod. “What do you need?”

And Beck blames the hysteria grating on his circuits, tipping him off-balance, for his reaction to the question: he freezes up. Stares. Runs his audio input on loop twice before responding. “What do you mean?”

Stepping forward, Tron catches Beck’s gaze, and Beck startles, feels his jaw spasm, at the sudden, unmitigated attention given to him. “You’re clearly agitated,” Tron acknowledges, taking another step. Beck huffs, bouncing on his heels, stumbling backward before he can think better of it. “It’s the stillness in the city that does it, isn’t it?” Tron pushes, and the words hurt. The _accuracy_ hurts. “How everything’s too quiet. Peaceful. You wait for something to go wrong, and it never does.”

Beck jerks his head down, stares at the general area of Tron’s chin.

“So,” Tron reiterates, the words strangely deliberate, as if Tron has to brute-force them into steadiness, “is there anything you need?”

“I—” his voice wavers— “I don’t know.”

He realizes it’s not much to go off of. But Tron always knows what to do; he’s _Tron._

Eyes sharp, calculating, Tron closes the gap between them, scrutinizes Beck from head to toe. His scan is less discreet than usual, but—beyond an initial twitch—Beck accepts it. Tron’s energy is warm and solid; it weighs down on Beck like two hands pressed flat against his chest, holding him still.

“It's the same problem as last time you asked," Tron notes, though it sounds more as if he's realizing it himself than asking Beck for confirmation. 

_Yes._ Beck raises one shoulder in a vague shrug. The security program emits a small sound of acknowledgement, takes another, slow step forward.

“Unlike last time, however, you _are_ injured.”

Another step.

“Stress fractures. Paige hits hard,” Beck mutters, rubbing at his injured wrist. The cracks are rough against his fingertips, but there’s no pain. “They’ll heal. They’re not really relevant.”

Another step. Tron is close— _really_ close. Beck doesn’t know what to do with his hands, his eyes, his entire self, and just tries to hold stiff. To not run away.

Unpredictable as ever, Tron releases a terse sigh, brings a hand to Beck’s shoulder and clasps it with firm pressure.

And Beck isn’t a standoffish program—far from it, really. It’s just that he’s been trained by the best. It’s just that there are so many things he could do to another program with nothing more than a subtle touch, and so many things a program could do to him.

A hand on his back could disable his disc port.

A brush of a foot against his own could sweep him to the floor.

Tron could _hurt_ him, here and now, so Beck shudders against the steady pressure of Tron’s hand, of fingertips gripping tight around his shoulder. There’s something glitching in Beck’s code; he’s coming apart in voxels, liable to split down the middle if he moves too quickly, if he talks, if he—

“Beck, relax. You’re safe here.”

Something, yanked painfully taut, releases inside of him, leaves him listless and weary; he goes limp, lets his head hang until it’s almost resting on Tron’s shoulder. He has nothing left to give: no energy, no motivation to keep fighting.

But it’s fine—he can let his guard down. Tron is here, watching, paying attention to their surroundings. He’ll protect Beck. In the end, he always does.

The hand on Beck’s shoulder squeezes once, shifts to cover the circuit at the crook of his neck, measuring its pulse and temperature. The circuits on Tron’s hand, hidden beneath his skin, are blissfully warm, and the heat seeps through Beck’s frigid code. Absently, Tron’s fingers tap a gentle beat against the side of Beck’s throat—it takes Beck a nano to recognize that it matches the distant, ticking whir in his circuitry, and that he’s running at a slower, more stable pace than he’s managed in a while.

Which… is good.

Surprising.

It must satisfy Tron as well, because the program emits a soft hum, radiates vague approval.

“You’re stronger than you know,” Tron mentions, without preamble.

Beck’s circuits flush hot. _Hotter,_ when he remembers how closely Tron is monitoring his reactions. “If you say so,” he mumbles, and hates how his voice pulls thin.

“You are. And you’re not on your own. I’m a system monitor, Beck.” Tron gives a little shrug, settles his other hand on Beck’s shoulder. “I think—” and his voice goes crooked, darkly amused— “that I’ve seen enough violence to understand how you feel. I've helped other security programs with similar problems.”

_But who helped you?_

It’s the sadness that shatters him, tearing down the fragile scaffold of fear and agitation that he’s been balancing on for so long. Beck pushes himself into Tron’s chest, presses his face and hands against the edges of hard, armored plates and ignores the discomfort. It's a lot to ask of Tron, and Beck recognizes that. Ignores it for as long as he can, because he needs to feel safe, needs to know that Tron is safe. 

Somewhere above Beck’s head, Tron sighs. Repositions his arms and hands, placing one against the juncture between Beck’s shoulders, and allowing the other to fall, more hesitantly, onto the center of his back.

It’s… really nice.

Beck logs an even one hundred nanos of contact before Tron starts to shift his weight, silently impatient—which is, of course, an essential component of Tron's mannerisms and personality. A sudden wave of affection, of familiarity, pulses through Beck's circuits. He steps back, lets his arms fall to his sides (with hands no longer trembling). Waits for Tron to relax into his own body and personal space before voicing his final worry. 

“Are you sure that I can do this? That I’m still worthy of—you know—”

“Do you want to continue being the Renegade?”

There’s something dangerous in Tron’s voice, something that tells Beck he could say ‘no’ and Tron would let him go. Wouldn’t even argue, for once. 

“Yes,” Beck decides, and means it. “I do.” This time, he doesn’t struggle to look the older program in the eyes. There’s no shame, no fear of giving up. Nothing left to _hide._

“Then it’ll all turn out fine, Beck. I promise.”

  
  


**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Changes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24083872) by [Anorptron](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anorptron/pseuds/Anorptron)




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